User Reviews

The story of General George Armstrong Custer is one of a controversial, ego driven, and one might argue, almost maniacal soldier who put fame and glory ahead of reason and common sense. Up until the Battle of The Little Big Horn on July 25th, 1876, Custer's career had achieved a nation wide notoriety due to his courageous actions during the Civil War and subsequent adventures pursuing Plains Indians across the mid-West.

However there was a conflicted side to Custer that this episode of 'Legends and Lies' bears out as well. He earned the term 'hard ass' by the soldiers he worked mercilessly, and was court-martialed at one point in his career for having deserters from his unit shot. So one wonders how he reconciled the fact that he also 'deserted' when he left his command to visit with his wife who he missed being with. His career lingered in limbo for a year until General Philip Sheridan rehabilitated it by calling on Custer to pursue the Sioux and Cheyenne across The Great Plains.

Attempting to revive his military career, Custer led a furious and deadly attack on a defenseless Cheyenne village along the Washita River in November, 1868. My first awareness of this event occurred with the 1970 picture "Little Big Man" starring Dustin Hoffman, a film that effectively portrayed the brutal and inhumane aspects of the Indian Wars. Custer earned the enduring enmity of Captain Frederick Benteen as a result of the Washita River assault when he left a column of twenty men behind to fend for themselves. They were later massacred by a Cheyenne hunting party, and when discovered by Custer a couple of weeks later, he refused to have them buried.

What occurred at The Little Big Horn is generally well known, although aspects of Custer's Last Stand have been argued over the years due to the mistrust between Custer, Benteen and Major Marcus Reno under his command. Reno's unit was ordered to attack the Indian village head on as Custer's men circled around to attack from another direction. Captain Benteen's men attempted to hook up with Reno once the battle got under way.

Custer's death at Little Big Horn shocked the nation at the time, and the battle itself has been studied almost endlessly since then. Quite obviously, the episode here only skims the surface of that event along with the generally quick overview of Custer's military career. Perhaps more so than most of the other episodes in the series, this one serves as a mere starting point for anyone who wants to dig into the career of General George Armstrong Custer more extensively.

The date of June 25, 1876 will forever be linked to the flawed leadership and disgrace of George Custer, the West Point graduate and Civil War general who set himself up for failure against the Plains Indians, due to his overweening pride and ego.

In the long stretch of territory in the central United States known as the Plains, 100,000 Indians were still roaming free. But the never-ending attempt to push the natives onto the reservations led to a number of brutal conflicts in the post-Civil War years.

At one point, the mercurial George Custer received a one-year suspension for poor judgment in battle and for what was nearly a desertion to leave his company and return home to Kansas for comfort from his beloved wife Libby. Custer's deportment in the massacre of sleeping people at Washita was an infamous moment in his checkered career.

But in less than a year, Custer was reinstated due to Phil Sheridan. The leader known as "Hard Ass" to his fellow soldiers, Custer drew up a battle plan at Little Big Horn that was craven and shoddy military strategy. He had failed to scout the area. Then, he gave vague instructions to his subordinates. He also greatly underestimated the resolve of Crazy Horse.

There were no winners at Little Big Horn. Within a year, the Cheyenne and the Sioux were in retreat to Canada and the reservations, and a way of life had ended forever. The name of George Custer will forever be part of the darker side of American history.